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The first hotel in the Emirates: the “BOAC Rest House” at Sharjah airfield

The other large category of non-payers was the airlines’ own employees. Senior officials
of Imperial Airways such as George Woods-Humphery and H.G. Brackley travelled
extensively to develop and promote the airline’s operations, and essential staff such as
station superintendents, wireless operators and engineers were constantly travelling
at the airline’s expense. The figures are high: almost twenty-five per cent of the 2,777
passengers on Imperial’s London–Karachi services between April 1930 and March
1932 were airline staff (this was on the Persian route, however, before Sharjah was
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in use). Seventy per cent were paying passengers and five per cent flew free. Given
that, as argued earlier, flights were rarely full, this level of staff travel may not have
resulted in substantial loss of passenger revenue (i.e. through seats being allocated to
staff rather than to paying passengers). Only in the years 1938-39, following a huge
increase in the quantities of mail being carried by Imperial Airways, was the number
of seats available to passengers deliberately limited, especially in the pre-Christmas
season. 28

If Imperial Airways suffered some loss of revenue on its free or discounted tickets, it
sought ways to develop other revenue streams (a model familiar to today’s air traveller).
Carrying mail was the principal one and was assigned increasing priority, but charging
non-passengers for the use of its facilities on the ground became another, albeit much
smaller, source of income. At Sharjah, this may not have been policy in its early days
but gradually, as more visitors spent several days staying at the Rest House, a policy of
partial cost recovery was introduced. Under Imperial Airways in the 1930s, charges
appear to have been made on the basis of meals taken. But on the take-over by BOAC
in 1940, higher charges were introduced for using the Rest House facilities.

The British diplomats on service in the Gulf were among the first to experience this
change in policy. Colonel Loch, the Political Agent in Bahrain, after spending a
week on the Trucial Coast with his wife, thanked effusively the Imperial Airways
regional manager in Cairo for having instructed the station superintendent at Sharjah
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that “we were to be treated as guests of Imperial Airways during our stay”. If the
superintendent had to be instructed not to charge the Lochs, then this must have
been contrary to standard operating procedure. Confirmation is available two years
later, soon after the outbreak of war, when J.B. Howes was appointed the first British
diplomat to be political officer at Sharjah and rented a house in the town. The
Residency Surgeon at Bushire (Lieut-Colonel J. Rooney) was due to visit Sharjah
for three weeks and Howes suggested that Rooney could feed himself or have meals
30
through Imperial Airways. But the latter’s rates were very high. Provisions were in
short supply because of the war: Rooney should arrive with as much tinned food as
possible in addition to his medical and personal camp kit. In the end Rooney did
lodge at the Rest House and received a discount on his bill in view of his length of
stay.

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